Sing Sing

"We're here to become human again." Rehabilitation Through the Arts at Sing Sing Correctional Facility

Occasionally a movie comes on the scene, and not usually in the summer, so naturalistic and unadorned, so brimming with humanity and the restorative nature of the arts, that it cries out, "Don't forget me at Oscar time!" Such is Sing Sing, set in 2005, when John H, Richardson's Esquire article The Sing Sing Follies was published.

Notorious as the prison was, its theater activity, like the therapy program at Folsom prison, provided a ragtag group the chance to mount theater productions aimed at elevating their spirits and their very souls. The sterling docudrama, headed by Oscar-winning Colman Domingo as founder Divine G, and real-life Clarence "Divine Eye" Macklin as Divine Eye, is so authentic and artful, that nothing this year can quite compare. Most of the cast either are alumni or current residents of the prison, where "Kill or be Killed" was a disturbing mantra, changing now as: "To put on nice clothes and dance around. To enjoy the things that are not in our reality."

The troupe creates a bizarre production, Breakin' the Mummy's Cord, that includes among others Shakespeare, time travel, and Freddy Kreuger. The transformative element is best exemplified by Divine Eye, who discovers an artistic side that far eclipses any success he may have had as a covert art dealer.

Never during the film does even the muted violence of many other top-rated tales like Shawshank or Alcatraz appear, assuring the elevation of spirit that accompanies the arts. "Sing Sing" is itself a work of art crying out to be considered the best movie of the year so far and one of the finest prison movies ever offered on the screen.

"I don't write comedies. I write satires," Divine G.